Sea Creatures
by hereswith
Summary: Short PotC oneshots that focus, in some way, on Jack and Elizabeth.
1. Sea Creatures

**Disclaimer**: I don't own it. Everything you recognise belongs to Disney. No infringement  
is intended and I'm certainly not making any money from this story.  
**Summary**: Looking at Jack reminds Elizabeth of a story she heard as a child.  
**Author's note**: Written for Sea Creatures Drabble Challenge at The Black Pearl Sails Group  
at Yahoo. I couldn't keep within the 100 word limit, but it's an even 200.

**  
  
Sea Creatures**  
**by Hereswith  
  
**  
Elizabeth had played on the shore, sometimes, in the days before her father had truly  
begun to speak of manners and rules. She had scrambled over rocks slippery with  
seaweed, searching for driftwood treasure, while the gulls shrieked high overhead.  
And she had lain down in the sand, ignoring her poor maid's protests, and tried to  
imagine the creatures that might live beneath the waves.

Their gardener had once, in his thick Scottish accent, told her about the seal folk, and  
how he, as a young lad, had seen one of them dancing on a starry, empty beach. Selkies,  
he had called them. Seals, which by some magic means could shed their skin, the way  
Elizabeth shed her clothes, and walk upright in the world of men. And should you find  
that skin, should you take it and hide it, you might make a part of them yours. But they  
would always long for the sea, and their eyes would reveal it the most.

She had nearly forgotten those stories, but she remembered them now, as she sat  
cross-legged in the shade of a palm tree, on a godforsaken spit of land, watching Jack  
Sparrow wade out of the water.


	2. Truth Be Told

**Disclaimer**: I don't own it. Everything you recognise belongs to Disney. No infringement  
is intended and I'm certainly not making any money from this story.  
**Summary**: How _did_ he escape, last time? That was the question, was it not... On the  
island, just before Jack tells Elizabeth the truth.  
**Author's note**: Dedicated to Jen, for all those comforting pats on the back :-)

**  
Truth Be Told**  
**by Hereswith**

How _did_ he escape, last time? That was the question, was it not, and a pertinent one, at  
that, coming from the lips of that impertinent wench who was standing before him, her person  
in such fetching disarray. He could hear the hint of curiosity in her voice and—_aye_—the hope  
that soared on the eddies of her anger. He was Captain Jack Sparrow, and she imagined he  
would save them, by some clever plan, or mayhap by some conjurer's trick. She wanted to  
believe that he would.

But he was not the pirate she had read about, for the pirate she had read about was not  
entirely him. And though the stories and tales had somehow become part of him, over the  
years, memory and legend spliced together like rope, on most days he knew full well what  
was, and what had never been. Sea turtles and the rumrunner's ship. Human hair from his  
back and the tail of the whip lashed across it. The times he'd had no hope of escaping and  
the blood on his hands.

She looked at him, now, like no Governor's daughter ever had, and the fire he saw in her  
was not the kind he usually roused in a woman, but it burned him nonetheless. He had, it  
seemed, held a place of some significance in her thoughts, from which he was falling, with  
each heartbeat, each breath. And what she expected from him, he could not give.

He meant to evade her, it would be such a simple thing to make a jest of it, but the garish  
light gentled nothing, it blunted no edges, and the words would not come. The bloody island,  
and her eyes, had stripped them all from him, and left him with naught but the truth.


	3. A Pirate's Life

**Disclaimer**: I don't own it. Everything you recognise belongs to Disney. No infringement  
is intended and I'm certainly not making any money from this story.  
**Summary**: He could have made a pirate out of her, with scarcely an effort... A double  
drabble (200 words), set during the Peas in a Pod scene.  
**Author's note**: As per Jen's request of something where Jack is thinking about Elizabeth.

**  
A Pirate's Life**  
**by Hereswith**

He could have made a pirate out of her, with scarcely an effort. It was in her blood, as  
if she, rather than the whelp, was Bootstrap's child. Had she been a man, she might have  
come in search of him, years ago: a runaway lad with a thirst for adventure and a longing  
for the sea, as sharp, bright and determined as any such lad he'd ever chanced to meet.  
Had he captained a ship, at that opportune moment, he might well have risked taking her  
in. She would be a quick enough study and an eager one, at that. And though she'd likely  
try his patience to the full, she would be bloody fierce in her loyalty, if he earned it.

But a man she was not. Though she wore the clothes of one, standing there at the rail, her  
body still betrayed her, with its hint of soft curves and hollows. She was born to finery,  
Miss Elizabeth Swann, the Governor's daughter and the Commodore's wife to be; to  
elegant ballrooms and the conversation of ladies, not the cutlass, the pistol and a pirate's  
life. And knowing what he knew of her, it seemed almost a pity.


End file.
